Of Apples
by Elizabeth Wright
Summary: This is a story based on the fairy tale of Snow White as I've heard it told, not necessarily based on any one version.
1. Default Chapter

A/N: This is the first of (hopefully) many chapters, and represents my first try at posting on FanFiction.net. Reviews welcome!  
  
Chapter 1  
  
She had always known that her mother was disappointed in her. She couldn't remember when she had come to that realization; she assumed that she hadn't been born with it. But, try as she might, she couldn't put an exact time to her comprehension.  
  
The disappointment manifested itself in expensive face creams smelling of rose and lavender and guaranteed to erase freckles, in magical hairbrushes that would smooth out the frizziest hair with one thousand strokes twice a day, and, after her twelfth birthday, in vials of subtle, but not too subtle, face paint for her eyes, lips, and cheeks. Every day since she was seven, a new perfume, beauty charm, or conditioner would make its way onto her vanity with a little note written in her mother's elegant hand specifying its use. By the time the princess was fifteen, her toilette took three hours in the morning and two at night.  
  
And then there was the story. She supposed that the first time she had heard the story was the first time she had truly acknowledged that she would never be her mother's perfect daughter. That was the first time she put a name to the chill that hovered in the scented air of her bedroom even after her mother had left it.  
  
The story was a short one of little consequence to anyone but her. One night after she knew that she was pregnant, the Queen was sewing in her chambers when she pricked herself. A single drop of blood fell onto the linen she was embroidering, creating a red stain on the pure whiteness. Her ladies-in-waiting heard her say to herself 'Oh but if my daughter could have skin like that linen, lips like that blood, and hair like the night,' and took it as prophecy, encouraging her that surely her daughter would be as beautiful as she. That was when she named her unborn daughter Snow White. Four years later, when she realized that her precocious toddler was developing freckles, and then two years after that when she realized that the princess's light brown hair was neither going to spontaneously turn a darker color nor lose its tight frizzy ringlets, she was said to have fallen into depression. The King, torn between love of his wife and love of his daughter reluctantly had the princess moved to a different wing of the house so that her constant presence would not further disturb her ailing mother. The strategy mostly worked. Her mother recovered, but never quite gave up on the idea that her Snow White should be beautiful. The constant stream of potions and creams and objects of magic attested to that.  
  
The newest gadget had arrived that morning; a hair net woven with gold thread and strung with seed pearls. According to the new lady-in- waiting that had accompanied this gift, the hair net was supposed to make her hair shiny and smooth, redundant to the brush, she thought. Snow White had spent the next half hour dodging the woman's dogged attempts to arrange her hair.  
  
"Milady? If you would only come over to the vanity."  
  
She sighed. "I do not wish to come over to the vanity, to wear that silly charm, or to otherwise primp for the day. If you would only realize that, we would get along much better." Snow White smiled at the woman and tried to run a hand through her mass of curls. "Surely you can see that having my hair worked on for an hour can't be on my short list of things I'd like to do this morning."  
  
The lady-in-waiting smiled uncertainly back, but there was no comprehension in her eyes.  
  
"Oh, look.what's you name?"  
  
"Jennifer, milady."  
  
"A good name. Look, Jennifer, would you like to have someone pull on your hair for any amount of time?"  
  
She shook her head, brows furrowed. "But, you're a Lady."  
  
"For all my faults, I am, at least, not that." The princess pushed off of the embroidered pillows in the window alcove, the plain linen nightshift hissing against the stone floor. Her room was large, as befit a princess. It wasn't until one's eyes began to wander along the lines where the walls met ceiling that the hastily plastered cracks began to be apparent. And once one saw the cracks, one also saw that the tapestries were curiously faded along the left edge as if some careless servant had stored them too near a window. For, of course, the royalty normally lived in the central wing with some overflow into the East. The South wing was mostly empty now, and this room had been hastily fixed and furnished when it became apparent that the Queen could not tolerate the princess any closer. It had once been beautiful; Snow White traced the carving running around the mirror of her vanity.  
  
"Milady?" Jennifer was standing right behind her, brush in hand.  
  
"Yes?" A sea serpent wended its way around her reflection, individual scales revealing themselves to her searching fingers. Oak, she thought, the artist must have been a master.  
  
"The Queen said I should make sure that you tried the net, milady, and I would not want to displease her."  
  
"I've already explained that I am no Lady." Snow White favored the girl with a wry smile. "So you must call me by my name, as unwieldy as it is."  
  
"But it's beautiful, mil.Snow White. I mean, I always wished.Jennifer is so plain."  
  
"I would be happy to trade." She sighed and plopped onto the chair fronting the vanity. "I won't have you punished for my recalcitrance, so you may do my hair if it's necessary." She lowered her voice as she tugged on a curl. "Though God help you if it isn't."  
  
"Thank you. Milady." Jennifer looked so relieved that Snow White didn't have the heart to correct her. "And your Lady Mother also requests your presence at dinner today."  
  
"Today?" She was supposed to exercise her horse today, well, not her horse. The horse that was hers but not in name. The silver filly. Robin was going to meet her out in the practice field at noon so that there would be someone there in case of trouble; the horse was still quite green, not even grown into a name yet.  
  
"Today." Jennifer began to gently but firmly tease her charge's mass of curls into some semblance of order.  
  
"Will you do me one favor before you get too absorbed in my hair? You know Marianne? My usual maid? Ask her to convey my regrets to the stables, she'll know what that means." Snow White watched Jennifer's face in the mirror. The small creases insinuating their way onto the girl's face spoke more than her still lips. Snow White spun around in the chair, heedless of the strands of hair that pulled out in the brush with her abrupt motion.  
  
"Tell me, or by God, I'll fling every last one of my mother's attentions out that window and leave you to explain it!"  
  
"Your mother decided that Marianne is not.appropriate to your needs."  
  
Snow White stood and snatched a handful of the gauds littering her vanity.  
  
"Lady, I tell you the truth, please!" Jennifer's hands stirred compulsively against the pink silk skirt of her dress as she fought not to grab the princess' hand.  
  
"Not appropriate!" Marianne, confidante, maid, and the closest thing to a friend she had. Her heart thundered in her ears. "Not appropriate." She repeated, looking down at what she clutched in her hand. "I will go to dinner with my Mother, but I will not be dressed as a doll. You can tell her that when you take all of this," she motioned the vanity with a broad sweep of her hand, "back to her quarters."  
  
"But,"  
  
"No, you will do it. Tell her too that you are not to blame and that if she punishes you she will be stealing my honor as well as my maid. I promise you now that you will not be punished." She spared a kind glance at the distraught lady-in-waiting before shrieking inarticulately and dashing a vial against the far wall. The crunch of glass against stone sent a shiver down her back, and she dug her fingernails into the palms of her hands. "You will do it. I am going to find my Father."  
  
Jennifer was staring at the wet stain seeping down the wall. "You aren't dressed." She didn't look away, merely watched the perfume drip onto the floor.  
  
"I will dress myself. You will excuse me for that long and then do as I told you to."  
  
"Yes, milady."  
  
"And don't call me Lady." She felt the corners of her mouth twitching into a fierce grin. If her Mother wanted a fight, she would give it to her. 


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2  
  
The woman to the Queen's left did more to help the princess and her mother mend their immediate differences than anything they could have said to one another. As soon as Snow White walked into the Queen's quarters a moist, mildewed, and ominously sweet smell mounted a subtle assault on her nose. Or maybe not her nose. A tingle at the base of her spine warned of something more ominous and deep than a simple odor. The slight, simply-clad woman standing next to the Queen flooded the room with her presence like subterranean water with the focus of a river and the malignance of a stagnant swamp. It was the direction, the drive towards some unknown goal, that scared her most. Snow White's first thought was to warn her mother, but she could hardly tear her eyes off of the other woman, who, for her part, could not seem to take her eyes off of the princess.  
  
"Snow White." The Queen's voice was tinged with customary irony and something more. A warning, or was she just imagining things?  
  
"Mother." She curtseyed briefly, meeting the Queen's eye as she crossed the room to sit at the table.  
  
"Your hair is not done."  
  
"No, it isn't." Her fire had been somewhat quenched. "I am told you sent Marianne away."  
  
The Queen's eyes flicked ever so slightly to the woman at her left. "Yes." She said.  
  
A fine tension sung along the princess' shoulders as the room fell silent. Nothing about this situation was right. Lines of heat radiated from the knot forming in the center of her back. Finally, after a few moments, curiosity and fear overwhelmed prudence. "Who is that?" She nodded towards the source of their uneasiness, who was now looking down at her feet, a few strands of black hair draped demurely across high cheekbones and fair skin. When the Queen didn't answer, Snow White addressed the woman herself. "Who are you? I have not seen you in court before, and I know most of the courtiers. Only last week was a banquet and; and I would know your name." She had to bite her lip to keep from continuing along that inane vein.  
  
"I am Lily Rose, milady." Her eyes were that indeterminate shade between blue and green, and their intensity grew as they sought out the princess' and held them.  
  
"A new lady-in-waiting." The Queen said.  
  
The princess dropped her eyes to the floor. "I see." She was breathing heavily as if she had been running.  
  
"Lily Rose, the food isn't here yet. Would you go down to the kitchen to see what's taking so long?"  
  
"Wouldn't a maid be better suited? Jennifer perhaps?" Lily Rose draped a casual hand over the back of the Queen's chair, delicate fingernails accidentally scratching against the satin of the older woman's dress. From her seat across the table, Snow White could see a fine tremble run through her mother.  
  
"I loaned Jennifer to Snow White for her use until she finds a more suitable companion." A dark look flew across Lily Rose's face, and the princess shot the Queen a sharp look. Something was going on here, and she wanted to know what.  
  
"I am famished." Snow White picked up the tea pot and began to pour herself a cup.  
  
"Oh, let me get that."  
  
"No, don't bother, but could you please go see about the food?" Trying to smile charmingly while pouring proved disastrous. "And some towels?" At least the tea had been sitting out for a while and wasn't hot enough to burn. With a sigh, Lily Rose swept out of the room.  
  
"Mother."  
  
"Snow White."  
  
"What's going on?"  
  
To the Queen's credit, she did not pretend to misunderstand. "She arrived a week ago in the remnants of a caravan coming from the north. Ostensibly, she remembers not where she is from or who she is." Snow White scowled, and her mother laughed bitterly. "I know. But it was enough to fool your father. He is on the way to infatuation with the girl." She fingered the pendant hanging on a gold chain from her crepe-paper neck. "And I'm getting older."  
  
"Marianne?"  
  
"Sent away by her request."  
  
"What's her hold on you, Mother? You are Queen. Father has never been unfaithful, even if he is bewitched now." The princess stopped, feeling the word drop to the lush carpet of the dinner-room with a curious weight. "Bewitched. He wouldn't see me this morning."  
  
"I suspected as much. And as to her hold on me, I won't pretend that I didn't wish Marianne away as well."  
  
Snow White almost didn't hear the Queen, hearing instead the echo of an old woman's manic giggle. She had met her first witch when she was ten and her mother had still been in the hopeful stage of her quest to beautify the gangly princess. She had been playing in her nursery in the East wing. Vividly, the game appeared in her mind, a remnant of memory without special significance but somehow accorded more detail than the rest of the dream- tapestry into which it was woven. Chess pieces set up so that the kings and queens stood directly next to each other on a cherry and oak chess board with a stain that looked like a falcon stooping. Her small hands had fluttered like frightened doves when the Queen and the crone had come in, and that was where the memory got cloudier. The witch had been tall, she thought, and had looked as a witch should. She had tugged at the princess's hair and pinched at her cheeks until ragged crescent moons appeared where her fingernails had bitten. But Snow White had minded the inner discomfort of being prodded by magic more than the physical discomfort of being prodded with rough hands. Even then, though, the magic had not had the feeling of what Lily Rose wielded. The crone had cackled, pronounced the princess outside of her powers to improve, and left in a swirl of dirty gray rags, but she was not malicious.  
  
"We have to send her away." Snow White said, looking up at her mother.  
  
The Queen smiled coyly. "Are we still discussing Marianne?"  
  
"No. Don't play with me. You know perfectly well who I mean."  
  
"The bitch." The Queen's eyes closed as a shudder rolled up her back. "I want you to keep an eye on Jennifer. She's pregnant, you know."  
  
"What?" Snow White flashed back on that morning's scene. "Who's the father? Why?"  
  
"Your brother is the father, and I can only assume that the two parties were mutually agreeable to each other, and, succumbing to vapors, humors, or what-have-you, felt that coupling would be pleasurable. There are the answers to who and why, but what does not seem to pertain. I sent Jennifer away because I suspect that heirs to the heir, illegitimate or no, may not be welcome in Lily Rose's eyes."  
  
"You think she wants the throne?"  
  
"I've been around long enough to know that most everyone does."  
  
At that moment, the object of their discussion swept in, leading a cowed scullery maid who was carrying a tray. The food was good enough, but the well of conversation had dried up, and the meal passed in silence under Lily Rose's watchful eye. 


	3. Chapter 3

Author's note: Hi everybody, sorry for the delay and for the shortness of this chapter. I'll be posting more (soon hopefully). Please R and R!  
  
Chapter 3  
  
Snow White lay on her back in the four-poster bed, staring at the shadows on the ceiling. They seemed to dance and blur as a tear rose to the surface and dripped slowly down the side of her cheek. When she had returned from her audience with the queen, she had found a spray of rosemary on her pillow as well as a small necklace. The rosemary was pushed to one side, the leaves fragrant where she had crushed them accidentally. The necklace was clutched in one hand.  
  
"Damn it." She whispered, brushing the moisture off her face.  
  
Marianne was the second witch she had ever met. Snow White had been fourteen when the Queen had decided that even unsatisfactory princesses needed maids. Snow White had not complained, even though the loud and buxom woman found to fill that position smelled odd and could be heard clattering around in the room next door at all hours of the night. At that point, the princess was less concerned with a little odor and noise than her mother's favor, and was prone to fits of melancholy that would take hold violently and randomly, wracking her small frame with sobs until she succumbed to exhausted sleep.  
  
She felt a little like that girl again as a sob threatened to choke her, but she looked over to where Jennifer was sewing placidly and smothered it. She had ridden anger and adrenaline as far as it would take her. Now she had no choice but to grieve for her loss. There was no doubt that Marianne would be better off out of this place. Even one as unskilled in the power as Snow White could feel the danger in Lily Rose. It was selfish to want her friend back in harm's way, but she couldn't help it.  
  
Once Marianne had determined the princess' ailment, she relentlessly began to prod her into what she called a "correct frame of mind." Food that had previously gone uneaten, much to the dismay of the second under-chef who had a soft spot in his heart for the wraith-like princess, began to disappear as the child blossomed under Marianne's tutelage. She was introduced to the maid's incredible store of herbs and potions that had nothing to do with beauty and everything to do with healing and peace and industry. The days were spent walking out in the fields and woods, with the woman instructing the girl in plant lore. The nights before bed were spent mixing and concocting in the closet Marianne had been given for a room. By Snow White's fifteenth birthday, she no longer felt compelled to curl up in a ball at the sight of a mirror, even though Marianne persisted in making sure the Queen's wishes were observed in terms of toilet. When Snow White complained, Marianne simply replied that better two hours be spent in front of the vanity than risk the Queen's displeasure. The princess had thought about that for a while and recognized the wisdom in it. Still, every moment spent inside seemed worse than drudgery, and on rainy days, or worse, rainy weeks, she relapsed into deep depression.  
  
"Lady?"  
  
Snow White opened her eyes to see Jennifer's blanched face. "What is it, what's wrong?" She embraced concern as an alternative to sadness.  
  
"I'm sorry to disturb you, Lady, but the crown prince is here."  
  
"Ah." Snow White's eyes flitted to Jennifer's belly, only just beginning to swell. She sat up and took the rosemary into her hand. Rosemary for remembrance. "I'll see him after I wash my face. Would you help me put this on?" She held out the little pendant that Marianne had left her with the herb.  
  
"Certainly, Lady." 


End file.
